


I made slow Riches but my Gain

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Engagement, F/M, Post-Canon, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10185209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It was true it wasn't what she had once imagined.





	

“Only one servant? And no garden? Oh, Emma, you’ll be poor!” Alice exclaimed, her voice a mixture of a prurient curiosity, the superiority that came of imported English wallpapers and Parisian bonnets, an odd, tinkling glibness Emma knew she was intended to be deceived by, so that she would not notice Alice’s flat eyes, the sharpness of her chin, the way her right hand played incessantly with the ribbons at her throat, the silken braid scalloping her narrow shoulders. Emma looked at her own hands in her lap and thought once she would have been horrified by the fading burn at her wrist, the unmanicured nails, the callus on her forefinger and by the fact that she had no gloves to wear to cover them. There was no goose-grease to spare and she had run out of the salve Mary had given her weeks ago. When she had said so, ruefully, Henry had kissed each imperfection and then the center of her palm. She had assured him the house he found would suit them, that one girl would be enough to help in the kitchen and that she would not suffer the lack of flowers, “or the hours weeding!” Then, he had kissed her mouth, a long tender kiss that told her his delight in her was also hunger and his hunger her delight; she was unsteady afterwards, as if she’d drunk the whole decanter of claret her father kept on the sideboard, and Henry had laughed to see her flushed cheeks, a laugh she hadn’t thought him capable of, gloriously, wickedly impure and precious. There was no way to tell Alice any of it, Alice who lived in the same elegant house, clad in silk and taffeta ribbons that dangled to her belt, who never once looked at the dahlia bed or the irises so singular every spring. She was her sister and a stranger and perhaps she always had been. Emma might say as much to Henry and listen to his reply with her head against his shoulder, his words as thoughtfully chosen as the gems in a parure.

“I suppose you’d think so, Alice,” Emma said. Words were dear and she wouldn’t waste them.

**Author's Note:**

> A little more fluffy-ish Emmry with a side of Alice, still coping with the ramifications of her espionage and assault. The title is from Emily Dickinson. The wallpaper is from London :)


End file.
